Northeastern University Background
We rely heavily on social media platforms to provide us with information on everything from news to politics to consumer reviews. This has left us extremely susceptible to widespread disinformation and poses significant risks to governments and businesses around the world. One of the key challenges has been finding a way to monitor and identify disinformation in real-time in order to effectively combat it.
Technology Overview
Northeastern researchers have developed a tool that uses domain-sharing behavior to characterize disinformation-identifying keywords and news stories. With access to a large data set of online user activity, the researchers have created a visualization tool showing what keywords and stories are shared by whom within the US at both the state and national level. This disinformation identification tool can be provided as an API-based service, enabling any company to monitor for disinformation on their networks in real time.
Benefits
Early detection of disinformation
Allows organization to create early action plans
Real-time monitoring
Applications
Federal, State and local government elections and affairs
Social media companies
Consumer reviews
Opportunity
The researchers are seeking partners in each vertical, federal, state and local government elections and affairs; social media companies; and consumer reviews, to run a disinformation pilot project during the 2022 midterm elections. Additionally, the researchers are seeking an executive entrepreneurial lead for the spinout corporation.